'Gossip Girl' Has an Expiration Date

Today in showbiz news: The CW gets ready to send its one-time flagship show off on an ice floe, Jamie Foxx might soon be a super villain, and HBO gets back into the Stephen Merchant business.

Say goodbye to the Upper East Side. Bid adieu to the Brooklyn loft. Wave farewell to handbags and high heels and the floppy, mysterious hair of Penn Badgley. Shut down the My First Twink™ electric doll known as Chace Crawford and put him back in his case. You see, Gossip Girl is ending. We've known that this is the show's last season for some time now, but now we have an actual date of departure: December 17. That's when the show will sign off the air for good, with a two-hour adios spectacular that will probably just be 120 minutes of Blair and Chuck breaking up and then getting back together and then breaking up and then getting back together until the lights fade and the screen goes dark. We can all hope that Dan and Eric will do a slow, lovely waltz together under a light snow and that they will kiss softly and fuse into one pure sexual being, but that's not gonna happen. We can dream of Dorota finding out that she's from a long line of Polish royalty and going off to live like a queen, but come on. They'd never. All that's going to happen is that Blair and Chuck will stare at each other angrily, then kiss, then stare angrily some more, and then kiss, and then the mansion will burn down around them and the credits will roll. That's it. [Vulture]

Though he usually plays good guys in a bad world, Jamie Foxx is in talks to play the villain Electro in the Amazing Spider-Man sequel. So that should be interesting. It's still hard to tell how good of an actor Jamie Foxx actually is, and a big villain role ought to be a good measuring stick. Electro is a pretty dopey looking character so it will also be interesting to see how the movie makes him more palatable for a modern audience. This summer's Amazing Spider-Man was great, so we're confident in this sequel, but a lot seems uncertain right now. One thing that is certain is Foxx's new role is a promotion from Wanda. [Entertainment Weekly]

Universal has laid off 25 employees, mostly from its home video department. Because, y'know, that market has completely cratered, likely because of Netflix and On Demand and other computer viewing options. People aren't really buying DVDs anymore, so movie studios don't need so many DVD salesmen anymore, basically. It's just another sign of computers destroying the world, crushing necks with their metal claws, cold red eyes watching the life die out of their victims, the war-scorched sky above them a harsh, burnished pewter. It's home video today, but what will it be tomorrow? Department stores? Travel agencies are already gone, eaten by Orbitz, so why wouldn't the tangible, real-life Amazons be next? Oh accursed computers, fie to you, terrible internet. Everything that's old is dying and we're doing nothing to stop it. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Finally some good news. HBO has ordered eight episodes of a new show from the very funny, very tall Stephen Merchant. Merchant, if you're unaware, is the unsung co-creator of the original The Office. He and Ricky Gervais made something great there, but Merchant is also quite funny on his own, so we're excited to hear this news. The show is called Hello Ladies and is about "a gawky Englishman searching for the woman of his dreams in Los Angeles. Half as charming as he thinks he is — and twice as desperate — he’s obsessed with infiltrating the glamorous world of beautiful people. Unfortunately the beautiful people won’t let him in." Sounds about right! Lots of awkward bumbling, probably some scathing commentary about shallowness and materialism and pretension and all that, and some dirty stuff too. A good mix. Well done, HBO. Now if you could just get Ricky Gervais to stop talking about himself and make another show, all would be right with the British comedy world. [Deadline]

Hey, here's a picture of Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm in a bathtub together. Nothing untoward is happening, it's just a still from the upcoming miniseries adaptation of A Young Doctor's Notebook, in which Radcliffe and Hamm play the same character at different ages. If this picture looks a little silly, that's OK, because the miniseries is described as "darkly comedic." Still, though. Look. It's Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm, together, in a bathtub. That's what it is. And that's the world now. A place where this exists. [The Hollywood Reporter]

News reports are focusing on the Germanwings pilot's possible depression, following a familiar script in the wake of mass killings. But the evidence shows violence is extremely rare among the mentally ill.